


Ikävä

by aki_no_monogatari



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Chapter 1 is sfw, Explicit things will start in chapter 3 or so, Lalli needs to learn to talk about feelings, Long Distance Sucks, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Set around Y92? Maybe? Timelines not yet safely established, Sigrun-Tuuri will be a topic but I don't know yet how much that'll show, Someone give these boys competent teachers, Tuuri lives, chapter 2 will be nsfw for the sake of "please do not imitate this work ethic", chapter 3 and up will have nsfw elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-08 02:09:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16420352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aki_no_monogatari/pseuds/aki_no_monogatari
Summary: Being in a long distance relationship sucks. Lalli and Emil know it too well and sometimes, radio calls and awkward letters aren't enough.(First chapter is completely sfw and can be read as a one-shot.)





	Ikävä

**Author's Note:**

> (fin) = spoken in finnish  
> (swe) = spoken in swedish  
> Anything else should be understood as spoken in the character's native language.

Loud.  


Everything was too loud.  


Lalli dragged himself towards Tuuri’s room in the skalds’ barracks, hands balled to fists in his heavy coat soaked by the constant drizzle. He was cold and tired, no longer paying attention to his surroundings now that he was safe in the awakening base. His ears were still ringing with the loud voice of one of his higher-ups shouting at him for a reason he didn’t quite remember. Something about not getting as much ground covered as he had been assigned to. The night had been difficult. Wet, slippery ground with heavy mud sticking to the shoes, the rain and the wind in the trees covering the noises of the beasts eager to find prey before the winter came. His left leg was still caked with mud from when he had slipped while following the lake’s edge and dull ache radiated from the bruise on his thigh, reminding him of his mistake. Not a mistake. Just an accident. Loud noise filled up the scouts’ office when he snuck back in like a drenched cat. Something had happened and people were shouting. Loud voices reverberating in the hallways. Loud voices directed at him and the people next to him. Even though he hadn't made any mistakes. It was not his fault. So much noise.  


Too much noise.  


It followed him even as he left the office. Voices rang painfully shrill as he walked past the day people starting their work day, always loud, always talking. Cats were fighting behind the kitchens, hissing and growling as he ducked past them into the path between the barracks, a shortcut to Tuuri's place. He wanted to get away. Go somewhere quiet. The outside world had not been silent. The inside world was never silent. Reality now felt like a sharp blade slicing through the outer layers of his skin to cause nothing but pain. He wanted to go back to his sleeping spot, curl up underneath the bed in his room, cocoon into his blanket until the world was quiet, dark and silent, but not today. Something else awaited him. Someone else.  


Finally, he reached Tuuri's place. Before the expedition, he had never set foot into it but now, he had a spare key for it somewhere and about twice a week at dawn, once he was back from scouting, he would knock on the door to wake her up when she was allowed to spend the night there. Normally, she was still half-asleep and would take a few knocks to get out of bed to open the door, but that day, the door almost slammed into Lalli's face after the first knock.  


"Lalli! You're here, finally!"  


Her voice was making him wince, too loud to bear right then. Unlike usual, she was already dressed and looked ready to go, even somewhat pressed for time and impatient as she ushered him in. While he took off his boots, careful not to drip mud and water everywhere, she chattered on, too fast for him to really care about understanding. Something about having to report in early. He wasn't ready to truly listen. All he wanted was the radio box thing.  


In a corner of the dimly lit room on her work desk, humming softly and the little lamps already glowing, stood the radio station Tuuri had built herself during the extended quarantine she’d been placed under after she came back. Pieced together from scraps and pieces her colleagues from her old job as a mechanic had given her, it worked well enough for private calls abroad. Tuuri had built it to reach Sigrun in Dalsnes and the Västerströms in Mora. "For updates on how things are developing and when we'll- when you’ll have another expedition." she had claimed but her calls to Norway were far more frequent than to Sweden or anywhere else. Through the Västerströms, they had reached Emil and once Emil had figured out how he could apply to use the radios at the headquarters of his cleanser corps, they had soon found themselves having a call with him about once to twice a week in the early mornings. Lalli draped his coat over the heating, hoping it might dry a bit before he left again to sleep in his room while Tuuri whirled back to the radio station, picked up the headphones and spoke into the mike in fast swedish. She took them off again almost right away and laid them back on the table before turning around to him.  


"Emil will be on in 5 minutes, so I'll leave now. Just turn it off once you two are done, okay? I’m not sure when I’ll be back here so please turn it off completely."  


Lalli nodded, looking past her at the radio. Tuuri was the one who looked after the radio but she had taught him how to turn it on and off before. He knew which flip he had to switch to turn it off, even if Tuuri always complained that it wasn't the right way whenever he attempted to do it in her presence.  


"Do it the correct way, alright? I'm so sorry I can't be here to translate and help but I really got to go, it's already been almost an hour since they told me to come because Onni- well, you know. Like last time. There's tea in the pot and-"  


Her voice trailed off as she looked him over and seemingly noticed how wet and dirty he was for the first time. Huffing a little, she turned to her closet to hand him a towel and a pair of her pyjama pants.  


"Here, dry yourself off and try not to get that mud everywhere. I'm sorry but I really have to go. You know where to find me if-"  


"Go. You'll be late."  


Lalli interrupted her ramblings. She'd be here for another 10 minutes if he let her go on. If she was surprised about him interrupting her, she didn't show it. She just looked at him with worry before she gave in and headed out, closing the door not too gently after shouting goodbye one last time. He flinched a little at the bang of the door but at last, it was finally quieter. The outside world turned into white noise muted by the wooden walls. He slipped out of his pants and also hung them up to dry over a chair before putting on Tuuri’s pants. They were too big on the waist and too short on the legs but Lalli didn't care about that. It was dry and would keep him warm enough. As he finished tying the waist strings, he glanced at the desk where Tuuri had set up a bit of a breakfast, or in his case, dinner. Whenever he came over in the mornings, they'd usually sit at her desk, share a cup of tea and a bit of food while waiting for Emil to call and then keep on lazily or sleepily nibbling and sipping as they took turns with speaking with Emil, and Tuuri translating for them if they needed it. They mostly didn't. Lalli and Emil were good at getting along without knowing what the other exactly said.  


Neither of them had yet had the time to really properly learn the other's language so most of their calls had been Emil chattering away (mostly about his day and life in Sweden according to Tuuri) and Lalli saying very few things, mostly just greetings or short answers whenever Emil wanted to know something. Tuuri tried to teach Lalli Swedish once in a while but so far, the lessons just left both of them feeling frustrated. Lalli looked at the bread and cheese she had set out but he wasn't hungry. An aftertaste lingered in his mouth, like an inkling of nausea killing his appetite. He poured himself some tea and grabbed one of her blankets to nest underneath the desk. She wouldn't like it if the blanket was on the floor but she wasn't around to complain or to make him sit on the chair so he burrowed into the narrow space. Wrapped up in the blanket, the mug of tea by his side, he slipped the headphones around his neck and waited for Emil's voice.  


The silence he had longed for didn't soothe him. The echoes of the world outside his little nest under the desk resonated in the sudden emptiness and left him no peace. The shouting of his superior repeated in his memories until the words made no more sense, the hissing of the cats and the sounds of the awakening base mingling into a sludge of echoes in his head. He felt his throat constrict as he curled up a little more, a dull ache in his chest tightening up. Being out at night in a forest infested by beasts made him feel less vulnerable than he felt in that moment, in the middle of Keuruu and supposedly safe from everything. Everything except the noise. He leaned his head against the wall, tired and defeated, and waited with his eyes closed. Maybe he should just give up and go to sleep. It was useless to try to communicate with Emil if the thought of Tuuri coming back and wanting to talk with him was almost unbearable. And yet, Lalli couldn't give up waiting. He sat under the desk, eyes closed, and waited because there was nothing else he could do.  


"Lalli?"  


Emil's voice sounded muffled and far away through the headphones and yet still pierced the heavy fog in Lalli's head. Lalli picked up the headphones and slipped them on as quickly as he could, uncharacteristically desperate.  


"Lalli? Hey?"  


Emil was calling out to him and it took Lalli a frustratingly long moment to fiddle with the headphones to get them on right and the mike in position and when he was finally ready, Emil had gone silent. Suddenly nervous and afraid that Emil might have left, Lalli breathed:  


"Emil?"  


The reply was immediate and Emil's happy voice came through the headphones, through the sludge of leftover noise to resonate clear and bright within Lalli's head.  


(fin)"Lalli! Hi, how are you doing?"  


Lalli was used to the heavy accent in one of the few phrases that Emil knew how to say in finnish. Not that Emil had reached any significant level of understanding in Finnish grammar as far as Lalli knew but he knew how to repeat a few phrases and had a little notebook with useful words and phrases, or in some cases, possible answers. Lalli also had such a little booklet with phrases that Tuuri had made him but he always forgot to bring it or to look at it. Emil was certainly getting more practice than Lalli did. It didn't matter anyway. The few bits of conversation between them that they both understood followed a certain order. A little code between the two of them. First Emil would ask in finnish how Lalli was doing, Lalli answered in one word before asking back in swedish, even if the foreign sounds never really rolled off their tongues very easily. Emil sounded like he had a potato in his mouth and Lalli had created a mix between Swedish words and Finnish pronunciation that people only understood if they knew what he was trying to say.  


(fin)"Tired." (swe)"... how are you?"  


'Tired.' was Lalli's general answer when asked how he felt after a night of scouting so it wasn't anything fundamentally new but this time, admitting his tiredness was like taking a deep breath for the first time since he had set out the evening before. His body relaxed, even as he mumbled through the ugly, foreign follow-up phrase that normally had him stumbling. A sigh escaped him as he leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes as he listened to Emil's voice. He missed hearing Emil's answer to his question but the tone of Emil's friendly, happy chatter told him more than enough. Emil was doing well. It was good to hear. Calming. Worrying about people was tiring, even more so when they were so far away. Lalli never quite knew how to deal with this urge to feel that Emil was fine, safe and happy, never knew how to handle it when Emil wasn't doing well. He rarely felt this way about other people, even his own family.  


Emil's voice weaved in and out of Lalli's thoughts and memories as he kept on talking, most likely telling him a story about how his last cleanser mission had gone by judging from his tone, and gently washed the noise of the world out of his head. If anyone were to ask Lalli what was so special about Emil's voice that made it so pleasant to listen to, he wouldn't have known know what to answer. It wasn't a voice with a special timbre, nor did it in any way resemble the sounds that Lalli liked. Wind blowing across a lake. An empty sauna. Fresh snow under his feet. Birch leaves in the wind. Steps on the duck boards. Emil's voice was none of these sounds. It was, undoubtedly, just the voice of a regular young man, something that under any account, shouldn't have such an effect on Lalli and yet there he was, giving in to the sound of Emil's voice for the sole reason that it was his. The night and the mess at the headquarters were nothing but dull, faded memories, and it was getting easier to breathe. The dull ache in his chest began to dissipate and the warmth of the tea, the blanket and the room finally seeped into his body.  


For a while, Emil kept on talking and Lalli just listened. At one point, Emil asked a question but remembered then that Tuuri wasn't around and grumbled a little before going on as before. Lalli wondered for a moment what Emil might have wanted to know but he found it more amusing to picture Emil's disgruntled face from his memory when suddenly, all of Emil’s faces came back to him. It hurt. Through the headphones came Emil's cheerful voice. In his head Emil's smile. All of Emil's smiles. The bright-eyed smiles when the sun was out and all was safe. The stupid carefree ones. The incredulous wide smile the first time Lalli had wrapped his arms around him for no reason other than to feel him close. The feeling of his smile against his lips.  


Missing.  


Separate.  


He was separate from Emil and in that moment, it hit Lalli harder than ever before. Harder than the first time he had tried falling asleep while knowing Emil wouldn't be there when he woke up. Harder than when he had come back from his first night of work with nobody waiting for him. He curled up into a tight ball, suffocating under the tight, aching grip of his longing for Emil and couldn't help but suck his breath in sharply as he felt his throat constrict, his body physically rejecting his loneliness.  


"Lalli?"  


Sounding worried and hesitant, Emil interrupted his monologue. Lalli realised Emil heard him and cursed himself with a low grumble. He didn't want Emil to stop speaking. He wanted to keep on listening. He wanted Emil's voice to fill his mind and calm him down again, slowly but surely. Emil's voice would do that to him, for sure. All he had to do was keep on listening. Breathe. Listen. Breathe. Calm down again. His hands clutched the headphones, pressed them tighter onto his ears as if Emil could be brought closer that way. He needed more of Emil's voice. He had to go to sleep in a bit to be ready by dusk to leave again. He had to calm down. But he couldn't.  


(fin)"Lalli? Are you... allright?"  


Emil stumbled through his Finnish and Lalli thought he could hear the rustling of pages being turned as Emil flipped through his booklet of phrases to find something to read off and suddenly, Lalli felt the rare urge to speak, to spit out the lump in his throat and try to reach out beyond the barrier of the headphones. He wanted to be closer. He wanted to curl up by Emil's side and feel his hand on his forehead and eyes until he fell asleep. Something was going to break inside of him, something like thin ice on a lake, leaving him wide open at his weakest. Lalli was afraid. More afraid than out at night, running from beasts and trolls. Terrified. He didn't know what would happen if he spoke, if he admitted it out loud, even though Emil wouldn't understand and-  


(fin)"I miss you- ... Emil, I miss you."  


The words spilled out of him, spilled out his agony and burned his throat in their path. His jaw hurt as he unclenched his teeth as the words forced themselves out. He hated the weak, pathetic tone of his voice but there it was, a half-choked whisper that laid his heart bare. More words were trying to come out. To tell Emil how he missed him. How he was afraid of one day finding a radio with nothing but white noise instead of Emil's voice. Complaints about Emil not being here. Longing. So much longing to be told. The words jumbled up in his head. Too much wanted to be said but how did one choose these words? Lalli knew how to pick his words with gods, spirits and luonto but people were a different matter. And Emil wouldn't understand anyway. Stupid. So he didn't say anything, offering only whimpers and silence to carry his meaning. He slouched forward, curled up until his forehead touched his knees, his hands still clasped over the headphones as he whined into the blanket, unable to stop his body from shaking and hiccuping.  


Then he heard Emil's voice again.  


Through the mess of words in his head came Emil's voice in a comforting, gentle tone. The same tone that Emil used back during all their collected expeditions and misfortunes whenever he covered Lalli's head with his jacket or a blanket and blocked out the world for him when it became too much to bear. Calling out to him repetitively with the same Swedish accent that made his name oddly different, a little sharper and brighter. Emil always treated his name preciously. He said it with the same tenderness that his fingertips carried when they brushed against Lalli's cheeks in the dark. Sentences now interjected with his name, the foreign words that Lalli didn't understand blurring into a calming murmur, like a little forest creek when the snow melted in spring. Peaceful. Sincere. Lalli knew Emil was telling him things from his heart, he could tell from the tone. Promises. Hopeful plans. Emil always talked about how he looked forward to the next mission, according to Tuuri. So did Lalli. Sometimes, he thought of his job in Keuruu as just something to pass the time until he could step onto that (dreadful) boat and leave yet again, one more time, to cross the distance between them. Right now, all they had were the bridges they created with their voices and Lalli let his mind float across the one Emil was building for him in that moment.  


Slowly, Lalli calmed down. They'd meet again. One day, their fingers would touch again. One day, there would be no more headphones, just Emil's lips by his ears. There would be dreams, lying side by side. Lalli realised there was something wet on his face and wondered when he had last cried as he wiped the tears away. He sniffled lightly, feeling oddly light and unburdened again. Emil's voice came to a halt before he repeated his question from before in a worried tone:  


(fin)"Are you all right?"  


Lalli sniffled again and after taking a deep breath, he replied quietly:  


"Yes."  


Emil sounded relieved when he continued speaking for a bit but his tone quickly turned serious and he announced:  


(fin)"I have to go."  


This was their sign that their call had to end. Emil was only given so much time on the radio and work would soon start for him while Lalli really needed to sleep. Reality had caught up with them. A bit too soon this time. Lalli wanted to protest, wanted to keep the call going but his swollen eyes were constantly threatening to fall shut as the exhaustion of the night was hitting with full force. He uncurled a little and sighed, getting ready to go through their usual exchange of set phrases to say goodbye. Normally, he'd be handing the headphones to Tuuri so she could confirm their time and date for their next call, but this time, they'd have to do without. However, before he could collect his thoughts for which odd string of sounds he was supposed to make to say goodbye to Emil, Emil continued, strongly emphasising and yet still hesitantly lifting his voice to a pleading question at the end. Lalli heard his name and a short bit of Swedish that he didn't understand yet. Emil repeated it a few times and Lalli knew Emil wanted, or rather needed, an answer but he'd have to ask Tuuri about the meaning of that phrase. He repeated it in his head, hoping it would stick until the next time Tuuri was around. He could hear in the tense silence that Emil was waiting for him, probably holding his breath, and even though he wasn't quite sure what he was agreeing to, he simply answered:  


"Yes."  


Emil audibly sighed in relief and ignored the person yelling in the background to quickly continue:  


(fin)"Good night, Lalli, sleep well."  


(swe)"Have a safe day. Bye."  


The call cut off and white noise filled the headphones that Lalli slipped off slowly. His mind was far away, far across the sea, as he went through the mechanic motions of twisting his body just enough to reach the flip on the radio and turn it off without leaving his corner. He set the headphones on the chair and burrowed back into his corner underneath the table, choosing not to leave for his own place this time. He could still hear the echoes of Emil's voice within and he didn't want the noise of the world outside to take these echoes away from him. Not now. The memories of Emil's voice were his alone. A faint smile crept over his lips as he realised:  


The world was quiet again.

**Author's Note:**

> Heya, this is Aki. I haven't published anything in ages so here goes nothing. Have an older fic project where I poured out some of my own experiences with the suckiness of long-distance yearning. More will follow. Tuuri's fate plays a role in this story so if some things seem cryptic, they'll get resolved later on when I actually figure them out entirely.  
> I hope you like it and stay tuned for updates if you wanna read more! The nsfw stuff is planned for chapter 3 and up, and depending on how it goes, I might cut the chapters so that if you'd rather not read explicit sex, you can just skip those specific chapters.


End file.
